Gongol.com Archives: February 2019

February 21, 2019

"These were deliberate choices."

The words of the judge hitting Roger Stone with a gag order are really the words of 2019 in a nutshell. Lots of good people feel demoralized by the seemingly non-stop parade of stupid events in the news. And almost every one of those news stories comes back to someone making deliberate choices. People need to keep the faith (even though it's hard) that consequences will eventually catch up to people deliberately making bad choices. But this is also why it's up to all of us to beat back the clowns (of all stripes) who say that the ends justify the means. The right process matters rather equally with the right result. Anyone who doesn't uphold that belief contributes to ruining the world as we know it. It's not worth getting to the destination you want if the driver chooses to go 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction on the highway in order to get you there. A little bit of humility would suggest that none of us are going to get everything we want out of political processes in a democratic system. Thus, the destination will almost always be a little different than what we wanted. Better to get there the right way, at least.

Engineering Week starts at home

And it ends there, too

On the radio: Rise of the (snow) machines

We have automatic dishwashers and clothes washers, furnaces controlled automatically by thermostats, and automatic sprinkler systems. So why are people still so opposed to using robots to do manual chores?

A school roof collapsed in Waterloo

Cedar Rapids will take another stab at a city flag

Their current municipal flag is...not good. Someone at the city ought to spend a little time browsing Japanese prefectural flags for inspiration.